Some helpful advice on academic publishing for new academics.

• From Dissertation to Book – Manage Your Career – The Chronicle of Higher Education
• It’s a Dissertation, Not a Book – Advice – The Chronicle of Higher Education

I don’t write fiction, but tips on writing in general are always useful to accumulate. Here are a collection of tips from a bunch of people who have learnt them the hard way.

• Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk
• Ten rules for writing fiction(part two) | Books | guardian.co.uk

To add to my mostly Mac OS X based list of writing tools –
Bean: An OS X Word Processor.

(Oh, and I think I left NeoOffice (based on OpenOffice) off the original list too.)

A while back I wrote an increasingly long list of (predominantly Mac-based) writing tools – Greenflame · Thinking about writing tools.

Fernando has recently written some more on than theme and on one of those tools (Scrivener), including some comments on how it helps manage his writing processes. See Fernando’s Desk » Getting It Down On Screen.

A selection of links that intersect around the role of new media in educational environments. Henry Jenkins has an essay (in two parts) that looks at the tension between participatory media and traditional educational models, and in particular emphasises the critical application of the following skill set:

1. Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal.
2. Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information source.
3. Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate information.
4. Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.

See:

• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: WHAT WIKIPEDIA CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA LITERACIES (PART ONE)
• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: WHAT WIKIPEDIA CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA LITERACIES (PART TWO)

Connected to this, is Mary Hess’ post about a review of her book on theological education promoting this type of critical engagement with new media by teachers and students. See:

• Tensegrities » Struggling to respond… and Tensegrities » A response to a review
• Tensegrities » Teaching/learning in theological education

Then AKMA has this post on reflecting on a meeting to discuss related matters – AKMA’s Random Thoughts – Retrospect and Prospect.

And then Tim chimes in with this post (connected to AKMA’s) – SansBlogue: Bible, Babel and Web 2.0. (Some long comments there – including some from Mark which he refers to here: E-BCNZer: Brighouse – “On Education”).

The integration of digital technologies, with existing pedagogues and technologies, will be here for a while yet. I know that I’ve found it frustrating as both a student and teacher that the roles I’m being trained for/are training people for are collaborative – they stand or fall based upon healthy, dynamic relationships (both in IT and religion) – and yet the systems promote individualism (for assessment particularly) and work to stamp out collaborative efforts (it’s called cheating). Intellectual property discussions (esp. academic ones) also connect here. There must be a better way.

AKMA has some gentle reminders about the need for typographical simplicity when selecting typefaces, and has some helpful links to some related typeface resources. See AKMA’s Random Thoughts: Type Trove.

Over the years I’ve used lots of different text and word processors to support writing I’ve needed to do:

• nroff and similar on UNIX systems for writing documentation
• View on the BBC Microcomputer in the 1980s
• Something on an Apple II+ which only displayed 40 characters per line
• WordStar, MS Word and WordPerfect under MS-DOS (pre-Windows)
• Nisus and MacWrite on my Mac Plus and Mac LC to write my Masters thesis
• MS Word 2.0, Word 95, Word 97 and Word 2003 on various Windows computers.
• MS Word 3, 4 and 5 and ClarisWorks on my Apple Powerbook 150 and 520c and PowerMac 6100 (Still have a set of Word 5 install floppies somewhere)
• AppleWorks and MS Word v.X on the Mac OS X G3 iBook (the latter for the PhD thesis)

Of all of these, MS Word 5 on the PB150 and PB520c offered the best system for just blatting out text without getting distracted by the bells and whistles of the software. The black-and-white display and keyboard of the PB150 seemed to work for me, plus with no internet connection etc. I only turned it on to write. Word v.X was okay (and it supported EndNote) but it didn’t really inspire me to write.

Now with the thesis all written up I’m wondering whether it’s time to look at trying some different things to aid the writing process in the next few months. Some tools that help organize the writing process as much as just allowing text entry and formatting. I’d like them to run on the iBook (which won’t be replaced in the near future) and to have some support if possible for bibliographic data. MS Word compatibility is less of an issue as I still have Word v.X and Word 2003.

From looking around the net these links look helpful.

Applications that help with note-taking and organising writing material

• Note Taking Application Faceoff at The Apple Blog
• Literature and Latte – Scrivener – looks really interesting
• Mellel, which looks good for academic writing and support for non-English languages
• Journler – Wherever Life Takes You
• mekentosj.com | Introducing Papers… Your personal library of science

Bibliographic support

• Bookends, reference and bibliography software for Macintosh
• Third Street Software – Sente
• I’ve used EndNote and avoided much of the grief others I know have had with it, so that’s still a possibility. It’s integration with non-Word word processors remains an issue though.

Some articles about Mac word processing

• Mac360 – Why The Mac Is The Ultimate Writers Tool Box.
• Mac360 – Is This The Best Word Processor For Real Writing?

I wouldn’t be adverse to a Windows XP/Vista word processor and material organizer though, if they did the job. Just don’t have a Windows laptop to run it on.

Anyway, now feels like a good time to try something new, before I get caught up in not being able to change while projects are ongoing.

Updates

• For Windows users then perhaps PageFour – Software for writers – novel outliner and tabbed word processor might do the task (thanks to Bill for the link)
• Mac OPML Editor for building outlines
• Acta, the classic outliner – available free and runs under MacOS Classic and earlier. (I used it extensively to write the Masters thesis back in 1990)
• Son of Acta – Opal: Easy notes and organizing for Mac OS X 10.4. See also Opal is the new Acta – O’Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog
• Outlining should also include consideration of The Omni Group – Applications – OmniOutliner
• I’ve also played with Inspiration – a mind-mapping tool of sorts. Useful for visual learners like me, who love to diagram ideas.
• DEVONthink
• Sidenote
• Notational Velocity – minimalist notetaker
• SOHO Notes
• Dan Schimpf Software: MacJournal
• Bartas Technologies – CopyWrite
• Flying Meat: VoodooPad
• Mori – Productivity Tools
• Sebastian Krauß / Software – My Mind

Jo pointed to this article about Google Books. Food for thought.

American Historical Association Blog: Google Books: What’s Not to Like?

Does anyone know if Sente from Third Street Software is any good for managing bibliographic data and handling citations in word processing documents. I’m currently locked into the MS Word/Endnote system, but I wouldn’t mind having the option to try out Mellel for academic writing (which Sente supports as well as Word).

I picked it up here at Faith and Theology: Footnotes or endnotes? but it started here at Frankly, Mr Shankly: TF Torrance, footnotes and endnotes. Then it evolved to here to Aaron Ghiloni’s poll pointed to by Faith and Theology: The footnote controversy.

At the end of the day – “Endnotes – just say no!”